FRANZ KAFKA – METAMORPHOSIS.
Here is a brilliant and truly horrible fable surrealist fable by
Kafka, in which the doomed Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover that
he has turned into a giant beetle cockroach like insect in the night. (Don’t
you just hate it when that happens?). Samsa struggles to right himself, and get
out of bed. He wants to call for help, but he can no longer speak. As he comes
to terms with the shocking and never explained transformation, (Arguably
presented as a metaphor for a social disease) his family, and his employers
arrive outside his bedroom door to call to him, trying to find out why he is
late for work. Gregor manages to get up, and then uses his mouth to turn the
key in his bedroom door, though it cuts him. As the door opens, Gregor sees the
shock, fear and revulsion of his loved ones. They force him to retreat back
into his bedroom. His father even throws things at him, including an apple at
him. (Symbolic of Original Sin, and how we inherit the sins of our parents),
The apple hits Gregor in the back and sinks into his carapace, where it will
stay rotting and giving him great pain. Gregor is now confined to his room as
the family try to live their lives as if nothing has happened. They simply never refer to his plight and
make excuses for him. Only his sister tries to see any humanity in him as she
feeds him household rubbish. Eventually, even she comes to reject him, and
Gregor is left alone to die a slow and lonely death. When he dies, his family
simply throw his carcass out as rubbish and go off to live their lives together
without him. This is a bitter, brooding twisted tale. Strangely however, it is
the family who are made to seem monstrous, with Gregor treated with enormous
sympathy. Kafka never got on well with his own father, which shows strongly in
this story. Gregor, like K in The Trial has done nothing to deserve such a
horrible fate. He is just a victim finding everyone he knows and loves turning
against him at his time of greatest need. Sad, horrible, but compulsive
reading. http://www.kafka-franz.com/
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
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